The act of ethnic cleansing
resembles a nation-wide spring housecleaning, as if the land must be scrubbed
and polished, and all evidence of the victims wiped away. The objective is to
change history and make it appear they had never been there. Ethnic cleansing
during the twentieth century was brutal and bloody. Over and over, it was a result of fear and
jealousy of those who are different. To
outsiders, the differences are difficult to identify sometimes. Instead of being based on color, ethnic
cleansing has been between peoples who appear to have similar backgrounds, who
have been neighbors and friends, and who outwardly seem to have much in
common. The fact that one group becomes
a threat by their very existence, as if they were a disease that could infect
the group in power, results in the idea that they must be either moved away
from the majority group or eliminated by any means possible.
Ethnic cleansing of the
Armenians during the Ottoman control of Turkey resulted in the attempt even to get
rid of any memory that the people had been there. Because Armenians were both racially
difference and Christian instead of Muslim, Armenian women and children who
were not killed were married to Muslims or put in Muslim homes to be raised
without any memory of their heritage.
The Ottomans also tried to eliminate the Greeks who were living in
Turkey. Although they did not try to kill
off all the Greeks, the Turks deported many and forced the others to live in
terrible conditions.
The Nazi’s engaged in
both ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Jews.
Because the Jews are a religiously based, not a racially based, hatred,
the Jewish people are very different from each other in ethnicity and
customs. However, many look and talk
like their neighbors, and often cannot be distinguished by facial features or
body type. The anti-Semitic obsession of
the Nazi’s completely colored life during the time they were in charge in
Germany. Jews were treated like animals.
They were subject to being moved to a ghetto, raped and murdered. The Nazi’s tried to remove any identification
of Jews as humans. They were portrayed
as “disease-carrying lice, vermin, bedbugs, or fleas that had to be
exterminated lest they infect the healthy body of German society.” (Naimark,
p.59)
The Soviets, beginning with Lenin but especially under
Stalin, tried to have complete control of the peoples of Russian. Groups who did not comply with the rulings of
the government were brutalized, deported, or murdered. The Soviets began deporting large numbers of
ethnic groups who were affluent or who lived on the borders of the
country. WWII escalated the number of
people who were sent to Siberia because of their religious or political
beliefs. Stalin seemed to want to be the
head of a nation where patriotism and loyalty to the leader was more important
than loyalty to one’s family, one’s friends or one’s ethnicity. The modern country of Russian was built on a
vision of a perfect society that needed to be rid of the enemies of the people
who were subhuman, so that those in power were justified in killing and
deporting anyone who was inconvenient or different.
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